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[quote user="Phoebe Vet"] Sam: Only one percent of Americans travel intercity by rail because there are very few trains on which they can travel. You can't cite numbers that show that no one uses a service that doesn't exist as evidence that there is no market for that service. What percentage of Americans live within 20  miles of an Amtrak station?  Even if they do, does the train actually go to their intended destination? <div style="clear:both;"></div> [/quote] Perhaps!   The Capitol Corridor offers 32 trains per day, on average, between the Bay area and Sacramento or vice versa.  In FY10 the service lost $16.1 million before interest and depreciation.  The average load factor was 27.7 per cent.  The Pacific Surfliner service has 26 trains per day between Los Angeles and San Diego.  In FY10 the trains lost $30.9 million before interest and depreciation.  The average load factor was 30.1 per cent. These trains carry considerably more than one per cent of the traffic between their end points, but it is small compared to the percentage of people who travel by auto.  Moreover, the numbers don't suggest that a high percentage of intercity travelers would use a service if it offered a greater number of trains.  If a private operator had an average load factor of 27.7 or 30.1 per cent, he or she would be looking for ways to increase demand or slash the service before the losses drove him or her out of business.  Not something governments have to worry about!  An investor owned company would look to similar markets to determine what the demand would likely be in a market that is not served with a similar service or is under served by the existing service.  They would do a market study to determine if they could recoup their investment.  Government, on the other hand, claims that the service is in the public interest, even though the users are not willing to pay for it, and offers it anyway.  If it cannot cover the cost of the service out of the fare box, it fobs the cost off on the tax payers, claiming that everyone really wins in the end. The problem that I have with a government run railroad that is not likely to recoup its costs is it likely becomes in effect another entitlement.  And once an entitlement is in place, lord help the politician who attempts to take it away.
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